Thursday, January 1, 2009

What Will Change Everything?

A few possibilities:

According to Roger Schank, wisdom: it will find you, in just-in-time bite-sized bits—no more libraries, just an immense “archive … that has all the wisdom of the world in it.”

According to Charles Seife, the record: “Just a few years ago, we had to be content with archiving a mere handful of events … All else, all of our memory and knowledge, melts away when we die.That era is over. It's now within your means to record, in real time, audio and video of your entire existence.”

According to Howard Rheingold, literacy: “we’re only in the earliest years of social media literacy.Whether universal access to many-to-many media will lead to explosive scientific and social change depends more on know-how now than physical infrastructure.”

According to David Myers, texts: “Inexpensive, customizable, interactive e-texts for worldwide use.”

According to Marti Hearst, not texts: “it is only a matter of time before text and the written word become relegated to specialists (such as lawyers) and hobbyists.”